The Good Society

by Lippmann,Walter

• ISBN13: 9780765808042
• ISBN10: 0765808048
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-08-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Initially a series of articles published in a variety of Lippmann’s favorite magazines, as the whole evolved, The Good Society became a frontal assault against totalitarian tendencies within American society. Lippmann takes to task those who seek to improve the lot of mankind by undoing the work of their predecessors and by undermining movements in which men struggle to be free.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition	xxiii
Acknowledgements	xli
Introduction	xliii
BOOK I. THE PROVIDENTIAL STATE
The Dominant Dogma of the Age	3	(4)
The active contenders for political power believe that human ends must be attained by the coercive direction of the life and labor of the people
This is contrary to the assumption of the whole struggle for emancipation
Is the dogma a new revelation or a gigantic heresy?
The Gods of the Machine	7	(15)
Technical Progress and Political Reaction	7	(5)
Coercive direction is supposed to be required by the machine technology
This conclusion not self-evident
Coercive direction was practised long before the industrial revolution
It is the policy of the Ancien Regime
Authoritative direction is inconsistent with experimental science and technological progress
Machinery and Corporate Concentration	12	(7)
Great corporate capitalism and monopoly are due not to technology but to laws
Large-scale production should not be confused with monopoly
Monopoly not favorable to technological progress
Economic concentration is not a predestined development, as collectivists assume
Progress by Liberation	19	(3)
The method of human progress is to liberate human energy
This was the faith of the men who made the modern world
Is it now suddenly obsolete? The tragic choices of this generation
The Government of Posterity	22	(23)
The Reception of a Myth	22	(2)
The current vision of a directed society is based on a myth in which omniscience is married to omnipotence
In the unsettlement of the World War men dreamed of the union of science with political authority and demanded experts who were autocrats
The Agents of Destiny	24	(5)
But the rulers of men are only men, and can do no more than ordinary men can do
In magnifying the function of the state as planner and director of man's destiny, the limitations of men have been forgotten
Roosevelt and Pericles
More efficient communication, but greater complexity in government
The quantum of political competence is limited and relatively fixed
Rulers can know only a little
They can do only a few things
The Illusion of Control	29	(6)
The whole social process is beyond any man's comprehension
The routine of the planner's breakfast
Men cannot direct the social process
They can only intervene here and there
The intellectual apparatus of total social control has never yet been invented
It would require a logic more complex than any yet known to men
The Organization of Immobility	35	(2)
The more complex the interests that have to be regulated, the less possible it is to direct them by overhead authority
The immobility of great armies
Of great corporations
Of bureaucracies
The modern cry for protection, stabilization, and security a sign that organization is too elaborate for human direction
The Nemesis of Authoritative Control	37	(3)
As organized direction increases, the variety of human ends must be standardized into uniformity
The symptoms of reaction to a lower level of civilization
More organization and more disorder
More planning and more chaos
The Great Schism	40	(5)
In this age men believe that there are no limits to man's capacity to govern others
The older faith was that progress was possible only as power was limited to the capacity and virtue of rulers
BOOK II. THE COLLECTIVIST MOVEMENT
The Intellectual Ascendancy of Collectivism	45	(9)
Before 1870 freedom was the criterion of reform
After 1870 collectivism began to dominate western thought
Reasons for thinking that its ascendancy may be at its zenith
The quandary of contemporary intellectuals
On making the best of both worlds while living in a regime of liberty
The average humane collectivist
Spencer's prophecy
Collectivists have no stopping place short of the totalitarian state
The Totalitarian Regimes	54	(37)
Their Necessary Absolutism	54	(3)
They can never restore the right to dissent
Mussolini's conception of individualism
The regimental organization of human beings
The problem of modern absolutists is how to overcome the diversity of human interests
The Fascist Paradox	57	(6)
The fascist theory that diversity is ultimately to be overcome by drilling the population
The national socialist fiction of race
The attempt to recondition a modern nation
How is conformity in the mass to be reconciled with the principle of leadership? Only by re-creating a hereditary governing caste
But this re-creates the diversity of interests which fascism seeks to abolish
The Fascist Reality	63	(3)
These are the paradoxes of the fascist theory
In practice fascism is the total militarization of a people for a war of conquest
Fascist policy is simply the policy of modern nations when they go to war
The Doctrinaire Theory of Communism	66	(12)
Communism, too, seeks to eliminate diversity of interests
In the doctrine this is to be achieved by public ownership of the means of production
The class struggle to end all class struggles
How does socialism evolve? The naive conception of property
The socialist formula for administering public property
The communist formula
``Equal'' rewards are required, but cannot be calculated
The Working Theory of Communism	78	(5)
The mechanism of Russian communism
The pork barrel
Communism creates a new form of property---public office
The struggle for wealth becomes a struggle for power
Stalin and Trotzky
The Communist Reality	83	(6)
Marxian theory does not explain the Russian regime nor guide its policies
Why was Russia the first supposedly socialist state? When Lenin was still a Marxist
His innocence
The Russian planned economy created by military necessity
The essential principles of the planned economy are not Marxist but militarist
Collectivism a War Economy	89	(2)
All known examples of planned economy are military in origin and purpose
Planning in Peace for an Economy of Abundance	91	(15)
The Dependence of Planning upon the Martial Spirit	91	(5)
Why planning is necessary and feasible under war conditions
The moral climate
The general staff tells the planners what to plan for
But who is to tell them in time of peace?
Civilian Planning	96	(5)
A planned economy must ration consumption
On planning production in America
An economy planned for abundance is a meaningless conception
Conscription and Rationing in Order to Plan	101	(2)
The planners must conscript labor or they cannot carry out their plan
Planning versus Democracy	103	(3)
Since a planned economy must execute its plan, planning is incompatible with the continuous responsibility of the government to the people
The people cannot make their own plan
The planners must control the people
A planned economy supposes a benevolent despotism
There is no way of planning to have benevolent despots
Gradual Collectivism	106	(25)
The Theory of Democratic Collectivism	106	(4)
The majority of well-disposed persons to-day are gradual collectivists
They believe in the dictatorship of transient majorities
But transient majorities cannot administer Five-Year Plans
The Polity of Pressure Groups	110	(6)
In practice gradual collectivism advances by concessions to pressure groups
The tariff
The Agricultural Adjustment Act
Other examples
The Vicious Paradox in the Polity of Pressure Groups	116	(3)
Gradual collectivism is the philosophy of special privileges for all
The corporative state
It can be regulated only by a dictator
Gradual collectivism arouses the expectation of plenty provided by the coercive authority of the state; its measures restrict the production of wealth
The Restriction of Wealth	119	(8)
The special privileges of gradual collectivism cannot be fairly or wisely dispensed by a democracy
The National Industrial Recovery Act
Special privilege is sought in order to obtain more income for less work
Rising Expectations	127	(3)
Collectivists have taught the people to think that they can be enriched by political power
Thus the more powerful the government the richer the people
This is an optical illusion
The ``treasure'' of the Duchy of Cleves
The Struggle for Power	130	(1)
By encouraging the belief that political power can enrich the people, and by impoverishing them through collectivist measures, the gradual collectivists have precipitated a world-wide struggle for power
The Wars of a Collectivist World	131	(28)
The Road to War	131	(1)
Gradual collectivism has reached its climax in the ``Have-Not'' nations
The Two Philosophies of Nationalism	132	(5)
The evolution of large political unions was arrested about 1870
The older nationalism united diverse peoples
The newer nationalism divides them
Unifying nationalism coincided with the ascendancy of liberalism, divisive nationalism with the ascendancy of collectivism
Is this coincidence or cause and effect? The American Revolution
The Divisive Effect of Collectivism	137	(4)
The tariff as illustration of why collectivism makes for separatism
Why the international socialism of the nineteenth century became the national socialism of the twentieth century
Authoritarianism is centrifugal
Emancipation is centripetal
Proletarian Imperialism	141	(5)
The class war in Germany and Italy
The failure of socialism in Central Europe
The class war transformed by fascism into international war
The Revival of Total War	146	(4)
The collectivist epoch has revived total wars --- that is, wars where the issue is supremacy
The limited wars of the liberal epoch
International Security and Total War	150	(9)
Post-war pacifism was concerned with the limited wars of the liberal epoch
The League of Nations and the Kellogg Pact
They failed because the whole world had turned against the liberal policy which they implied
Total wars are not justiciable
Nor can they be decisive
BOOK III. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF LIBERALISM
The Great Revolution and the Rise of the Great Society	159	(24)
The Outlawry of War by the Modern Conscience	159	(2)
The conviction that war is an anachronism is recent and marks a revolutionary change in the human outlook
The monument to Lord Chatham
Mussolini and Hitler's eulogies of war
The outlawry of war by the modern conscience is not due to sudden enlightenment
The real devastation of war is the dislocation of the economy to which all the belligerents belong
Thus modern wars are civil wars within one Great Society
The Division of Labor	161	(4)
The revolutionary transformation from self-sufficiency to interdependence
The rise and fall of the Great Society in the Roman world
Its rebirth after the dark ages and its progress beginning in England in the eighteenth century
The accelerating tempo of the industrial revolution in the past century and a half
The essential principle of the revolution is the division of labor
This is a vastly superior mode of production, and all true progressivism must conform to its necessities and its implications
The Cultural Lag	165	(3)
This new economy requires a general readaptation of usages, laws, institutions
But the readaptation lags behind the economic changes
This cultural lag is the cause of social problems
The paradoxes of poverty and plenty, democracy and insecurity, interdependence and imperialism, legal equality and social inequality, enlightenment and degradation
All specific revolutions are incidents of the great industrial revolution
The Collectivist Counter--Revolution	168	(5)
Collectivism of the right and of the left are forms of counter-revolution against the division of labor
The new economy is regulated in markets by means of prices
Markets are the only means by which specialized labor can be coordinated with the variety of human ability and of human preferences
But existing markets are often ruthless regulators
This was recognized by nineteenth-century economists but insufficiently appreciated
Men seek to escape from the ruthlessness of the market
This leads to the protectionist movement in all its forms
They also seek to master the markets
This leads to the aggression of monopoly and imperialism
The Basic Difference between Liberalism and Collectivism	173	(4)
Collectivism and liberalism are different ways of answering the technical and human questions which have been posed by the division of labor
Collectivism substitutes authoritative planning for the market as regulator of the division of labor
Liberalism seeks to perfect and civilize the market
Why the division of labor must be regulated in markets
The collectivist seeks to locate the market in the brains of the Planning Board
Adam Smith and Karl Marx	177	(4)
Adam Smith was a true prophet because he understood the division of labor and its implications
Karl Marx confused the economy of the division of labor with the social order of the nineteenth century
So Marxism has proved incapable of guiding socialists when they are in power
What Lenin had to learn
Why Russia is not a socialist experiment
Latter-Day Liberals	181	(2)
The latter-day liberals fell into the same error as Marx
Only they became apologists for instead of opponents of the status quo
The sterility of their doctrines
The Debacle of Liberalism	183	(20)
An Inquiry to Be Undertaken	183	(1)
By the second half of the nineteenth century liberalism was decadent
Why did the leaders of thought abandon it and embrace collectivism?
The Fallacy of Laissez-Faire	184	(8)
The confusion of laissez-faire concerning the relation between property and the law
Originally a revolutionary idea, it became an obscurantist and pedantic dogma when it was treated as a principle of public policy
Laissez-faire assumes that property contracts and corporations have some kind of existence outside the law
They are the creation of law
Herbert Spencer's argument for the freedom of the quack
The example of employers' liability
Owing to their intellectual error the latter-day liberals raised a false problem when they sought to define the jurisdiction of the state, and inhibited the development of liberalism
The Enchanting Promise	192	(3)
Yet liberalism, though inhibited, is based fundamentally on a true principle, and is the only philosophy capable of being truly progressive in a society which lives by the division of labor
No accident that the increasing division of labor in the nineteenth century coincided with the outlawry of slavery, the enfranchisement of men and women, toleration, peaceable unions, and pacifism
The unfinished mission of liberalism
The Dismal Science	195	(8)
The latter-day liberals thought the mission was achieved
The fallacy of the classical economists
Their imaginary economic system is not an apologetic description of the actual system but the criterion of its reform
The Agenda of Liberalism	203	(38)
The Inexorable Law of the Industrial Revolution	203	(7)
The two fallacies of laissez-faire and the classical economics sterilized the mind of liberalism, and made it a defense of the status quo
Liberals came to a dead stop on the right road
Collectivists took the wrong road
The debacle of liberalism was due to human error and not to an inexorable law of social development
The inexorable law of modern society is the law of the industrial revolution
Marx's failure to see this and the consequences in Russia
The mode of production cannot be revolutionized
The social order has to be reformed until it is adapted to it
The Social Problems	210	(2)
The maladjustment of the social order to the economy of the division of labor is the social problem which has to be dealt with
The Field of Reform	212	(20)
A survey of the field of reform
Eugenics
Education
Conservation
The mobility of capital
Big Business
Business corporations
Money and credit
Inflation and deflation
The improvement of the markets
Necessitous bargains
Monopolies
Social insurance
Unearned incomes
Public investments and social services
Taxation
The maldistribution of income
The Radical Conservatism of Liberal Reform	232	(9)
The required reforms are far-reaching
They are radical in regard to the social order and conservative in regard to economy of the division of labor
They will necessarily disturb many vested rights
They recognize the same evils as do the gradual collectivists
Collectivism a mistaken remedy for real abuses
Liberalism is the philosophy of the industrial revolution, and its object is to adapt the social order to the new mode of production
The liberal philosophy is only partially developed, and is beset with errors
The Political Principles of Liberalism	241	(41)
The Nature of the Problem	241	(5)
The pioneer liberals recognized the need for security of transactions in the division of labor
Their myth about natural rights
The dogma of immutable legal rights
All legal rights are declared and enforced by the state
What the law makes it can change
How the law of rights and duties shall be changed is the constitutional problem of modern society
The Ultimate Power of the People	246	(5)
The real constitutional problem was not clearly defined in England
It was in America
The discovery that, with the dissolution of the ancestral habits of obedience, all states derived their power from the people
The formless power of the mass of the people
Madison on the need of ``refining'' the will of the people
The mechanical checks and balances of the American Constitution are for this purpose
The purpose is more important to-day than in the eighteenth century, even if the means are not satisfactory
The authors of the Constitution conceived ``the people'' as having many dimensions
Their effort to provide true representation
Representation of the People	251	(5)
Americans have always been afraid that the will of the people might not be successfully ``refined.'' So the checks and balances were reenforced by judicial dogma
Judicial lawmaking
The resulting conflict
Distrust of the People	256	(4)
While judicial inhibition on popular sovereignty is untenable, the belief persists that democracy is not safe for the world
Something has been lacking in the conception of democracy
What is lacking is the corollary of democracy that the people cannot rule as heirs of Caesar but must rule in a way peculiar to popular government
Democracy has its own method of social control
It is the method of a common law which defines reciprocal rights and duties enforceable in courts rather than a method of overhead administrative commands
Social Control by the People	260	(6)
This method of social control makes it unnecessary to choose between anarchy and authority, individualism and the social interest
The Passage to Political Maturity	266	(2)
This method of social control belongs to the maturity of a people when they turn from paternal authority to fraternal association
Social Control by Law Rather than by Commands	268	(5)
Nineteenth-century individualists and collectivists both overlooked the democratic method of social control and fell into a furious debate on a false issue
Burke's misstatement of the problem
Concrete illustration of a mousetrap
The Regulation of Property	273	(9)
This method of social control implies a radical change in the current conception of property, contract, and the corporation
They are bundles of rights and duties defined by the state and alterable by the state
Thus, without overhead direction, economic activity can be comprehensively regulated
The Government of a Liberal State	282	(31)
The Function of Officials	282	(7)
This method of social reform implies that all officials, not merely judges, shall have a predominantly judicial temper
The distinction between the legislature and the judiciary is a practical expedient and not a difference in function
When legislators cease to be impartial among contending interests, they adopt an imperial view of their power
The Enforcement of Law	289	(5)
This method of social control gives the predominant initiative in law enforcement to injured parties
Thus it is flexible and encourages compromise and adjustment
Though unsuited to war and critical emergencies, it is otherwise economical in the employment of force
It does not require an aggrandized bureaucracy
Government Suited to Human Capacity	294	(3)
This method of social control is suited to human capacity
Men can judge a dispute
They cannot plan and direct a social order
Justice is as high a purpose as a government can have
If it aims at some more grandiose end, it has no durable basis
Officialdom under Law	297	(3)
But, of course, a modern society cannot exercise all social control through private actions
Yet this is no exception to the principle
For as officials are multiplied, it is more than ever necessary that they should have defined rights and duties rather than plenary powers
In the liberal state the official and the private citizen are equals under the law
The Regulation of Officials	300	(2)
A popular legislature must delegate legislative power in technical affairs to special commissions
This makes it all the more important that it should preserve a judicial attitude toward these commissions
They are not imbued with sovereignty
The Control of Public Works and Social Services	302	(3)
In the operation of public works and social services, the collective agencies are not viceroys of the king but chartered corporations under the law
The principle illustrated by the relation between the army and the civilians in a constitutional state
Collective Agencies of a Liberal State	305	(3)
So-called private business corporations and so-called public agencies are to be regarded as collective agencies chartered by the state with specific rights and duties that are to be adjudicated impartially and amended when the interests of justice require it
Many forms of collective action are possible in a liberal state
Natural Associations	308	(5)
The rights of associations based on kinship and fellowship, the family, the neighborhood, the party, the guild, and the like, have perplexed liberal thinkers
The problem is by no means solved
But the road to a solution would seem to lie in the progressive definition, adjudication, and revision of the reciprocal rights and duties of such natural associations
The Regime of Peace	313	(16)
By Centralization of Power	313	(2)
This conception of social control resolves the dilemma of centralization versus home rule, national sovereignty, and international order
The fantastic centralization required by the collectivist theory of world peace
By Uniform Law	315	(3)
The dilemma exists only because men have confused centralization by the aggrandizement of the executive with uniformity of law in wide jurisdictions
The Civil Society	318	(6)
The area of common conceptions of law is the area of peace in the modern world
Into this civil society all nations must enter, the backward and the aggressively rebellious
Imperialism benign and self-liquidating
Imperialism malign and destructive
The problem of the Have-Not nations does not exist in that part of the Great Society which lives under substantially common law
The example of the United Kingdom
This civil society is required by the division of labor
World peace is not to be conceived as the creation of a world government but as the result of a general acceptance by all governments of a common law
The Ideals of the Great Revolution	324	(5)
The conception of a common law is not a noble sentiment alone but the highest promise of the deepest necessity of the economy by which men live
The division of labor, common laws, the ideas of equal justice, restraint of prerogative and privilege, and peace as the policy of nations are organically related to a new way of life
BOOK IV. THE TESTAMENT OF LIBERTY
The Struggle for Law	329	(23)
Lawless Legality	329	(5)
The chief contenders for power in the modern world are fundamentally lawless
Thus they are incapable of terminating their struggle
The Intimation of Law	334	(4)
The conviction that all laws must reflect the spirit of law has pervaded the whole effort to become civilized
In the nineteenth century the conception of a higher law was abused
The scorn of Bentham and Pareto for the higher law
But mankind cannot do without
Classic Examples	338	(4)
In order to understand the spirit of the higher law, two examples may be studied
King James I and Chief Justice Coke
The vindication of habeas corpus
The Two Modes of Thought	342	(2)
The logic of authority
The logic of liberalism
The Higher Law	344	(8)
The higher law defined
It is the prohibition of arbitrariness in human transactions
The conception of a society which is good because it is free
The Pursuit of Liberty	352	(17)
A Human Affirmation	352	(1)
The prohibition of arbitrariness is inspired by an affirmation of the creative energies of men
The Will to Be Free	353	(9)
Galileo and the Inquisitors
The rack versus the telescope as an instrument for studying astronomy
The rack illustrates arbitrary interference with creative energy
All privilege is an arbitrary interference with creative effort
The liberal conception of equality
The challenge to oppression comes from men arbitrarily interfered with in productive effort
For that reason freedom from arbitrariness has had to accompany the division of labor, which in turn requires more freedom from arbitrariness
On Designing a New Society	362	(7)
The modern economy requires freedom from arbitrariness through equal laws
But it cannot be planned
No new social order can be designed
The agenda of liberal reforms is long, but there is no general plan of a new society
All plans of a new society are a rationalization of the absolute will
They are the subjective beginnings of fanaticism and tyranny
The liberal vision of society is grander than that of those who would be Caesar to the human race
It commits the future, not to a few finite politicians, but to the whole genius of mankind
On This Rock	369	(22)
The Lost Generation	369	(3)
We are a generation without convictions strong enough to challenge the ruthless
They can be found only in an intuition of the human destiny which is invincible because it is self-evident
The Ultimate Issue	372	(4)
A resume of this inquiry
At what final rampart must a man stand when he fights for human freedom? The inviolability of man
Man the Inviolable	376	(2)
The universal intuition of human inviolability has guided men in their ascent from barbarism and upon that rock the Good Society is founded
The Degradation of Man	378	(5)
The degradation of man in the nineteenth century by the denial of his inviolable essence
The Hegelians, Marxians, pseudo-Darwinians, and Spenglerians
The spiritual confusion of the modern age
Its blatant immorality
The chorus denouncing liberalism
The collectivist hostility to religious experience
The Foundations of Tyranny	383	(4)
All apologies for tyranny require the denial that the victims are human
The classic pattern is Aristotle's defense of slavery
The Servile State
``Watchman, What of the Night?''	387	(4)
The modern reaction against freedom is triumphant, but it is a disaster
It cannot prevail
It runs against the mighty energy in man which has overcome the inertia of the primordial savage
Index	391